The Chinese government has given its blessing to the proposed sale of Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK)'s devices business to Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), making the hoped-for closure of the deal by the end of this month more likely. The sale had originally been scheduled to close in March, but concerns of rival, Asia-based phone makers expressed to Chinese authorities are thought to have put a brake on the progress of the transaction. The deal has so far received regulatory approvals from China, the European Commission, the US Department of Justice, among others. (See Nokia's Devices Sale Gets Approval From China and Euronews: Nokia Handsets Sale Delayed.)

The European Court of Justice has declared that the EU Data Retention Directive, which was introduced in March 2006 and requires telcos to store the communications-related metadata of EU citizens for up to two years, is invalid. The Directive was introduced in the wake of terrorist bomb outrages in Madrid and London, but provoked much controversy, which intensified following the Snowden revelations of widespread data-snooping by intelligence agencies. (See Euronews: Germany Takes Stand on Snoops and Euronews: Prism Prompts EU Data Rethink.)

ADVA Optical Networking (Frankfurt: ADV) has completed its acquisition of Oscilloquartz SA, which was part of the Swatch Group. ADVA hopes Oscilloquartz's synchronization capabilities will bolster its presence in the backhaul systems market, and it plans to assimilate Oscilloquartz's technology into its Syncjack offering.

Verdi, the German labor union that represents thousands of Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT) workers, has called on DT employees to go out on strike today and Wednesday, reports Reuters. Verdi is pushing for a 5.5% pay raise; DT has to date offered 3%.

Privacy and security advocates are tugging in opposite directions. Privacy advocates want records to be destroyed, and security advocates want them retained. I'm skeptical whether retaining the records actually enhances security. For starters, no one has ever asserted that 9/11 happened because the cops had too little information. We've seen the same thing with the Boston Marathon bombing — the cops already knew the culprits were bad guys, but the information got buried in the mass of other data.

Six different communications service providers join to debate their visions of the future CSP, following a landmark presentation from AT&T on its massive virtualization efforts and a look back on where the telecom industry has been and where it's going from two industry veterans.

It's an art and a science to make mentorship, inclusive leadership, diversity and promotion of high-potential women work, says Honore' LaBourdette, vice president of Global Market Development at VMWare.

Supporting women both inside and outside of Fujitsu is a top priority of the telecom vendor. Yanbing Li, Fujitsu Network Communication's director of System Software Development & Delivery, shares why it's important, but why there's still a long road ahead.

Liz Centoni, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's Computing System Product Group, shares why mentoring in all its forms is important for women and what Cisco is doing that's made a difference for women in tech.

Guavus unites big data and machine intelligence, enabling many of the the largest service providers in the world to save money and drive measureable revenue. Learn how applying Machine Intelligence substantially reduces operational costs and in many cases can eliminate subscriber impact, meaning a better subscriber experience and higher NPS.

When used to analyze operational data and to drive operational decisions, machine intelligence reduces the number of tasks which require human intervention. Guavus invested in Machine Intelligence early. Learn about the difference between Machine Learning and Machine Intelligence.

Guavus unites big data and machine intelligence, enabling many of the the largest service providers in the world to save money and drive measureable revenue. Learn how applying Machine Intelligence substantially reduces operational costs and in many cases can eliminate subscriber impact, meaning a better subscriber experience and higher NPS.

When used to analyze operational data and to drive operational decisions, machine intelligence reduces the number of tasks which require human intervention. Guavus invested in Machine Intelligence early. Learn about the difference between Machine Learning and Machine Intelligence.

Hossam Salib, VP of Cable and Wireless Strategy at ADTRAN, outlines key trends as MSOs begin to deploy next-generation Gigabit and 10-Gigabit cable networks. In the interview, Hossam outlines the advantages of a Fiber Deep architecture, FTTH options including EPON and RFoG, and the importance of SDN and NFV in building next-generation high-bandwidth cable networks.

At ANGA COM 2017, Cyrille Morelle, president and CEO of VeEX, updates Alan Breznick with VeEX's new products and technology. This includes VeSion cloud-based platform for network monitoring, AT2500-3G advanced spectrum analyzer and MTTplus-900 WiFi Air Expert module. He also comments on DOCSIS 3.1 deployment and Remote PHY technology.

Versa CEO Kelly Ahuja discusses with Carol Wilson the current status and trends in the SD-WAN market, Versa's innovation around building a software platform with broad contextualization, and the advantages that startups can bring to the SD-WAN market.

ARRIS's John Ulm says a major accomplishment of SCTE•ISBE's Energy 2020 program is increased focus on power cost and consumption, including inclusion of energy requirements in operators' RFPs and RFIs.

Understanding the full experience of women in technology requires starting at the collegiate level (or sooner) and studying the technologies women are involved with, company cultures they're part of and personal experiences of individuals.

During this WiC radio show, we will talk with Nicole Engelbert, the director of Research & Analysis for Ovum Technology and a 23-year telecom industry veteran, about her experiences and perspectives on women in tech. Engelbert covers infrastructure, applications and industries for Ovum, but she is also involved in the research firm's higher education team and has helped colleges and universities globally leverage technology as a strategy for improving recruitment, retention and graduation performance.

She will share her unique insight into the collegiate level, where women pursuing engineering and STEM-related degrees is dwindling. Engelbert will also reveal new, original Ovum research on the topics of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, security and augmented reality, as well as discuss what each of those technologies might mean for women in our field. As always, we'll also leave plenty of time to answer all your questions live on the air and chat board.